Another bullet point to add to the list of Indo is the
1800s (albeit this is like the one Kenneth Grahame imagined and Walt Disney
exaggerated): angkot are like Mr. Toad's
Wild Ride. For the most part they are to be completely trusted (and really,
Indonesia wins the Defensive Driving award) but you never really ever know
what's coming next—-today the Ledeng-Kelapa took a sharp turn into an empty
parking lot and up through an off-road neighborhood before screaming back into
streamline traffic and a series of whiplash stops and starts. Occasionally your
journey is interrupted for a gas station detour, where all 2—17 passengers will
idle in the back while the driver hops out to top up the tank and chat a minute
with a cigarette before getting back on route. If you ride at night, after the
sun's set and the roads are clear of too much traffic, they speed. I don't know
exactly how fast, because I'm not really motor-smart or possessed of any inner
speedometer, but sometimes I feel like we're flying. I push the windows open
and stretch out my legs (because no one else is in the angkot, not this late at night) and Sister Atmi does the
same, while silently praying belum menikah, Tuhan. Belum menikah (I'm not married yet, Lord!). The angkot that just got me here covered 10 minutes in 5, plus
threw me a good foot along the bench when it lurched to a second's standstill
to dump me out at the curb. Yes. It is a daily wild ride (though I still think
the Disneyland version is even scarier).
Anyway. That is not how I intended this email to start but
there wasn't going to be any dignified way to segue into it anyway because
I HELD A BABY TIGER
( !!!!!!! )
I know. I'll give you a minute to
squeal/dance/sing/applaud, because I needed some recovery time, too. It was all
just very unexpected, you know? Because usually there aren't baby tigers
sitting at the side of a city road, and even if there were I don't think anyone
would be well advised to pick it up and cuddle with it. But this is Indonesia,
and sometimes that means we have entered an entirely different dimension.
It was all completely illegal, if you haven't already
guessed that. They sell pets along the street outside of Bandung Indah Plaza,
normal pets like Persian cats or golden retrievers and the requisite handful of
hamsters and mice. Except that this week . . . could it be? The man was dressed
in all black, selling his one treasure from the darkest corner along the
shadowy curb. I asked him to confirm my suspicion. He growled a yes to my harimau? and picked up the little thing with one hand like so
many childhood cat shows and then I
was holding him, I was cradling
him, I was cuddling up close to
his slanted cat eyes that blinked sad and bright green right back up at me.
Granted, he was no Bengal. his captor explained that he's
a forest tiger, almost more of a
panther, and that he'll "only" grow to about half the weight and size
of India's version. I didn't care. He is orange and black stripes and big,
padded, clumsy paws and I have never in my life been more tempted to spend 50
bucks than when I was right then and there.
But that's extravagant on a missionary budget, and also
Verboten (White Handbook, page 46, though I doubt they had large wild cats in
mind). So instead I just held him for a very long time and cursed the day I'd
left my camera home to charge and then finally, heartwrenchingly, had to say
goodbye. The next vendor tried to sell me a three-week-old kus-kus (sp?) (a
strange, owl-eyed creature that fit snugly in my open palm with long primate
toes wrapped around my fingers) and the guy after that wanted me to take a
Kalimantan squirrel for keeps (one fell asleep in my skirt pocket while the
other curled up in the crook of my arm) but it just wasn't the same. A tiger! I
held a baby tiger.
I feel like maybe he was my own little omen, a physical
manifestation of the Chinese New Year. What could begin a more prosperous year
of the Tiger than an actual tiger
itself? Nothing, that's what.
Unfortunately that's the only real substantial story of my
week, aside from what I've already written in a letter home that I posted
yesterday. The rest is just a quick list, so in other news of note:
+ We are
poor. I don't really know how this happened, seeing as we are only half way
through the month and usually we finish out with money left over, but while
grocery shopping today we had to debate whether or not we could afford milk, or
if it was really necessary to buy five packages of mie instead of just three, and it was really pathetic
while also being really hilarious. We are literally saving spare pennies in
jars.
+ Also, two
of the three umbrellas in our trio broke irreparably on the same day within the
same hour during the same torrential rainstorm. Mine was such a pathetic
skeleton of cloth and wire that a grown man passing by actually pointed a
finger and laughed out loud. And we're poor, so we can't buy a new one (you
would think, in a country that drowns for six months out of every year, they'd
find a way to mass-produce umbrellas to allow for cheaper price tags), so last
night we were three people to one umbrella, which was also hilarious. Sometimes
struggle is really fun.
+ When the
squirrel guy kept insisting I buy one of his little friends, I posed the
customs question and he said "Just put them in your coat pocket and walk
through security. That's what I did with these guys in Jakarta." Again.
Illegal. So illegal.
+ Gilang is
M.I.A., which I fear has something to do with his (albeit) ex-girlfriend. We
haven't been able to reach him all week, and finally took an angkot out to Cimahi in search of his address, which he'd
written down that first day we met him on the bus. It was raining (of course)
and wet, and cold, and confusing, but we finally found the apartment and then
he wasn't home. But I met his landlady, who is 89 years old with bright white
hair that curls to her shoulders and a tall, thin frame she dresses in floral
blouses and thin solid sweaters. She was born to a Javanese mother with a
French Officer father back in the (not too long ago) colonial reign and speaks
Indo, Sunda, French, and Dutch. Her house is made of whitewashed, woven bamboo
and I loved her.
+ I think my
taste buds are changing, which is weird and is that possible? I mean, I know
that's a kid to adult thing, seeing as I've learned to like asparagus,
rosemary, and (sorry, dad) tomatoes, but since when did I crave rice or ginger?
+ I'm also
pretty sure my internal thermometer's broken, because I've been wearing a
sweater all week in weather that wouldn't even qualify more than a t-shirt back
in Utah.
+ Roshen
(Branch Mission Leader, Dev Patel boy) is the Colonel Brandon of Indonesia. He
was contributing to our Gospel Principles class last Sunday and I literally
have NO idea what he was mumbling about except that it was good and helped
answer Buldan's (Marno's investigator) question.
We taught The Fall of Adam and Eve for Sunday's lesson,
and then again yesterday when we went to visit Brother Bambang (since he can't
come to Church, we bring church to him). And I was again and again struck by
our unique understanding of the story and how I really can't understand it any
other way. Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy.
How would that not ring true to every soul? So many people think this life is
punishment, a direct result of Eve's "folly" and our price to pay.
From things I've seen here, I can almost understand how people have come to
that conclusion even without the philosophies of men mingled with scripture.
The punishment theory fits in very well with the kind of burdens they're called
to bear—and yet it completely discounts my understanding of God, too.
Basically, Dad, you are so right. People don't understand God. I remember Anne
Lamott's notes in Traveling Merices, how growing up she couldn't reconcile the
Catholic God in His stained-glass glory and fickle tempers, or the Jewish God
that allowed a Holocaust to happen, or her own atheistic belief accompanied by
the constant pull of there being something more. I remember born-again rallies
with my Girl's College friends in NZ, where God meant pulling a semi-truck from
a rope between your teeth or being at one with a drum beat to a
rock-and-roll hymn. I see the world around me here, an Islamic nation in
constant supplication to a God they don't believe has provided a Christ. The religious
confusion goes so beyond crosses atop steeples or Darwin fish slapped across
Subarus. The world's swaying from sky-high, air-thin branches because they've
lost the root of it all. They do not know who God is.
Now, I am not saying that I do. I am nowhere near such
revelation, but I am closer to it because of what I know through the Restored
Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I have been flipping between Words of Mormon 1:8
and 2 Nephi 27:25-26 almost every morning this past week, because the
connection makes so much sense in that full soul, pierced heart sort of way and
also because Dad's thoughts in last week's email collected together a lot of my
own (lest you have any remaining doubt to your calling as Bishop or the
recipient of revelation as my father, Dad, your weekly emails have been almost
word for word the very answers I've been looking for). He said (hope you don't
mind the quoting): "The gospel was restored because God wants to be known.
He desires above all things, as our Father, that we love Him as He is and
understand Him as He so much wants to be understood. Moses 1:38—He wants us to
return to Him, and we have to know Him to live with Him eternally. And how do
we do that? By the second half of Words of Mormon 1:8: ". . .that they may
once again come to the knowledge of God, yea, the redemption of Christ."
The key to the knowledge of the Father is found in the redemption of
Christ."
And that is what we, as missionaries, are trying to tell
the world. To publish peace, to speak the words of Christ, to read upon the
housetops (click click click) the glorious news of a Full and Everlasting
Gospel. Sometimes the most we can do is tell someone that they are children of
God, a Heavenly Father who loves them. Occasionally we are given the incredible
opportunity to tell them even more, that God loves them so much that He sent
His Son, who came to do His Will—and what that Atonement really means. An
Atonement we better understand because of the Book of Mormon, which we have
because of the Restoration, which is a marvelous work and a wonder intended for
us to know God.
I love the Book of Mormon. It testifies of my Redeemer and
tells me what I must do to gain peace in this life and eternal salvation in the
life to come. I love God, and am learning to know Him, which in turn allows me
to love even more. This is His Church, and it is true.
I love you.
Sister E.
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